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Claude Muncaster (1903-1974) Factory Scene
Monochrome aquatint Signed in plate 22x28cm Provenance: the family of the artist, by descent. Click here for more from the same source. Aquatint is an unusual medium for Muncaster - the renowned watercolourist - and an unusual subject. Here he has handled the factory scene with perhaps more even than his usual skill. The smoke makes dramatic courses across the sky, and the wires, roofs and gantries all bring very strong triangular forms to a scene with powerful vertical lines. Claude Grahame Muncaster, RWS, ROI, RBA, SMA was the son of Oliver Hall RA. At the age of fifteen his career as a landscape painter began, and he soon took to the seas, spending the 1920s and 30s travelling the world with his sketchbook in a series of vessels. With the outbreak of war and he joined the RNVR training as a navigator. Having left school at fifteen his mathematics was very weak and it was a relief for all when his artistic talents meant he was recruited as a camofleur. A master of capturing seascapes he was therefore able to hide huge ships ‘in plain sight’ with clever disguises. After the war he painted for the Royal Family and was a frequent guest at Sandringham. Claude Muncaster was a watercolourist known for his landscapes and maritime scenes. He was born Grahame Hall, the son of the Royal Academician Oliver Hall who taught his son to paint from an early age; Grahame first exhibited his work aged 15 and a few years later was showing at the RA. However, he adopted the name Claude Muncaster in 1922 to dissociate his career from that of his father. Muncaster’s primary choice of subject matter came from a genuine love of the sea. He made several long-distance sea voyages, including one around the Horn as a deckhand in the windjammer Olivebank in 1931, which he described in ‘Rolling Round the Horn’, published in 1933. Armed with a sketchbook, his aim was to be able to ‘paint ships and the sea with greater authority’. This he certainly achieved, perfectly capturing the limpid first light of morning over the Port of Aden, the choppy rain-grey waters of the Bay of Biscay and a streak of sunlight through gathering storm clouds at dusk in Exeter. He became an Associate of the Royal Watercolour Society in 1931 and was a founder member, and later President, of the Royal Society of Marine Artists. During the Second World War, Muncaster served in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve (RNVR) from 1940-44, training as a navigator before going on to advise on the camouflage of ships, and also worked as an official war artist. In ‘Still Morning at Aden’ (1944) he depicts Allied warships in this safe anchorage in the Middle East; the back is stamped with Admiralty approval. In 1946-7 he was commissioned by the Queen to produce watercolours of the royal residences at Windsor, Sandringham and Balmoral; the Duke of Edinburgh, in a foreword to a biography of Muncaster, recalls looking at these and considering the artist’s ‘unerring instinct for a subject’, his sense of atmosphere. Other commissions included large panoramas of the Thames and of Bradford. His career also included work as an etcher, illustrator, writer, lecturer and broadcaster, and his paintings can be found in the Royal Academy, Tate, National Maritime Museum Cornwall, National Railway Museum and Royal Air Force Museum. -
Gordon House (1932 - 2004)
Circle E
Lithograph 86 x 45 cm Signed, numbered 48/75, and titled in pencil below the plate. An excellent example of Gordon House's work: a modern design, influenced by art deco, in blue and yellow. Gordon House was born in Pontardawe, South Wales in 1932 and studied at Luton and St. Albans Schools of Art. He began working for advertising agencies in the 1950s and became a full-time artist in 1961, exhibiting several solo shoes. He designed for several leading London galleries, the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, and popular bands such as the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. Several dozen Gordon House prints are held by the Tate. Condition: very good; backed to board. If you are interested, please email info@manningfineart.co.uk or call us on 07929 749056. Click here for other abstract lithographs by Gordon House. -
Edwin La Dell (1914-1970)
The Meadows, Oxford
Lithograph 40 x 55 cm Signed, titled, and numbered 31/80 in pencil. A bright blue winter sky looks over Christ Church Meadows, complete with pedestrians waltzing down Deadman's Walk. La Dell studied at the Sheffield School of Art, where he won a scholarship to the Royal College of Art. From 1934 to 1940 John Nash was the head of printmaking there, and taught La Dell. La Dell himself became head of lithography there in 1948, and remained in post until his death. During the war La Dell was an official war artist and a camofleur, but he is probably best known for his lithographs of Oxford and Cambridge that he published himself. His works are widely held in the public collections, including the Royal Academy and the Government Art Collection, the latter of which holds many of his views of Cambridge. Condition: very good. Backed to linen. If you are interested, please email info@manningfineart.co.uk or call us on 07929 749056. Click here for other views of Christ Church. -
Edwin La Dell (1914-1970)
Christ Church, Oxford (1956)
Lithograph 33 x 42 cm Signed and dated lower right. With invoice from Royal Academy and letter from the artist. This view of Christ Church from the meadows is rendered in a muted palette, suggestive of a late autumn afternoon. Four coat-and-hat-clad pedestrians stroll along, accompanied by small child and dog. La Dell studied at the Sheffield School of Art, where he won a scholarship to the Royal College of Art. From 1934 to 1940 John Nash was the head of printmaking there, and taught La Dell. La Dell himself became head of lithography there in 1948, and remained in post until his death. During the war La Dell was an official war artist and a camofleur, but he is probably best known for his lithographs of Oxford and Cambridge that he published himself. His works are widely held in the public collections, including the Royal Academy and the Government Art Collection, the latter of which holds many of his views of Cambridge. Condition: mounted to board. Slight but even age toning. If you are interested, please email info@manningfineart.co.uk or call us on 07929 749056. Click here for other views of Christ Church. -
Edward Burra (1905 - 1976)
Café
(1928 - 1929, this edition published 1971) Woodcut 10 x 15 cm; sheet size 24 x 34 cm Numbered 15/45 lower left and initialled EB lower right. Published by the Nicholas Treadwell Gallery in 1971. Burra's woodcut of a male and a female figure, entitled 'Café'. The two figures, seemingly a couple, gaze at one another intensely and intimately, giving the impression of having been interrupted by the viewer. Both figures' faces bear tattoo-like markings: he a star and the moon, she a geometric design resembling a noughts-and-crosses board. The "café" in which they sit is a dreamily abstract landscape full of palms and other plants from the tropics. Edward Burra was an English painter, draughtsman, and printmaker. He travelled to Italy in 1925, the same year he met the noted British Surrealist Paul Nash, and both of these influences are evident in this woodcut. Nash introduced Burra to woodcut-making in 1928, the same year that Burra began this woodcut series. His first solo show was held at the Leicester Galleries in April 1929, and he exhibited with the English Surrealists in the 1930s. Condition: Excellent. If you’d like to know more, please email info@manningfineart.co.uk or call us on 07929 749056. -
Valerie Thornton (1931-1991)
Bodleian Quadrangle, Oxford (1983)
Etching 24 x 35 cm Numbered 13/75 lower left, titled below, and signed and dated lower right, all in pencil. A very good example of Thornton's recognisable and unusual etching style. Her work is deeply concerned with material, and many of her etchings focus on eroded stone, emotive landscapes, and weathered architecture. Here, Thornton draws out the exceptional texture of the Bodleian Library's local stone. Valerie Thornton was a British etcher and printmaker. She was born in London, but was evacuated to Canada with her two brothers during World War II. She returned to London in 1944 and studied at the Byam Shaw School of Art in 1949. From 1950 to 1953 Thornton studied under P.F. Millard at the Regent Street Polytechnic, then spent eight months at Atelier 17 in Paris. In the early 1960s, she moved to New York and worked at Pratt Graphic Art Centre. In 1955, she succeeded Howard Hodgkin as assistant art teacher at Charterhouse School and in 1965 she became a founding member of the Print Makers Council. In 1970 she became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Painters-Etchers and Engravers. Thornton was a member of The Regent Street Group (a group of nine artists who studied together at the Regent Street Polytechnic in the early 1950s). The group also included Susan Horsfield, Renate Meyer, Michael Lewis, Ken Symonds, Philip Le Bas, and Peter Riches. Thornton's work is included in a number of major public collections including the Victoria and Albert Museum, the British Museum, and the Tate. Thornton died in 1991 in Chelsworth, Suffolk. Condition: generally very good. If you are interested, please email info@manningfineart.co.uk or call us on 07929 749056. Click here for more works by Valerie Thornton. -
Gerald Mac Spink (flourished 1920 - 1940)
Art Deco City Scene with Engine Car
Block print 41 x 29 cm Signed 'G Mac Spink' in plate (in reverse) upper left. "Over the great bridge, with the sunlight through the girders making a constant flicker upon the moving cars, with the city rising up across the river in white heaps..." - F Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby An Art Deco city with 1920s engine-cars in the foreground. A white tower-block rises up, emerging palely from a chiaroscuro darkness, a great edifice above the tiny pedestrians below. Spink was a skilled artist, illustrator, and designer who produced a series of posters in the inter-war period for companies including the London Underground, Southern Railways, LNER, Hawker Engineering, and British Steel. He won a prize in 1933 from the Imperial Institute for his poster artwork. He also worked as an aeronautical engineer in Kingston-on-Thames for Hawker Engineering; his greatest achievement was the creation of the 'Squanderbug', a 500cc racing car which he built in 1947, and which races even to this day. Provenance: the artist's estate. Condition: very good. If you are interested, please email info@manningfineart.co.uk or call us on 07929 749056. Click here for other works by the artist.
